7. Plaid Cymru Debate: NHS Performance

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:07 pm on 29 January 2020.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 5:07, 29 January 2020

Okay. But it's clear, is it not, that where we have the Conservatives suggesting somehow that we can't be focusing on the damage caused by lack of investment in social care, we've only got to look to England to see what Conservative Governments there did in starving local authorities of funding and the devastating impact that that had on hospitals, especially accident and emergency, in England? It raises very, very clear doubts in my mind and I'm sure in the minds of many others about how seriously the Conservatives take this need to build an integrated system where you have to have sustainability across social care as well as our hospitals. And the Conservatives, the only place we can judge them, from governing in England, have made a complete hash of that ability to bring together sustained social care in order to support our hospitals. 

We will support amendment 4, but we will be rejecting amendment 5. The block grant may well be rising in the coming financial year in real terms, but it is far from being the real funding level that Wales should be seeing. For example, it doesn't reflect the money Wales should be getting from schemes like HS2, which is sucking in so much UK Government funding, and Wales is not getting its fair share of it, so we can't be supporting that. 

But we need to focus now on improving performance and getting better value for money for what we are spending. And, still, today, we give the Deputy Minister—not the Minister—an opportunity to give us just a whiff of where this Government is refocusing on transforming the health service that we have today into the health service that we will need in future. We need to build in the kinds of changes, the kinds of transformation funds that can take us to that destination, because, currently, managing, or, sadly, mismanaging the NHS means that we remain in this rut, that, whoever will be health spokespeople for opposition parties, as long as Labour remain in Government, it seems, it'll be the same speech time and time again, because there is no sign at all of the transformation our NHS needs.